Cambodia lake battle: How Boeung Kak became a puddle
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Once a tourist attraction and home to thousands of Cambodians, Phnom Penh's biggest lake is now having muddy sludge pumped into it by property developers. Residents are fighting back, but is it too late to save their homes?
"We never used to have flooding before the company came."
"The company" is Shukaku, an entity which does not have a listing in the local Yellow Pages, but is otherwise very well-connected. It is owned by a senator from the governing Cambodian People's Party. His wife runs Pheapimex, which controls vast areas of land through government-granted concessions.
The authorities signed a 99-year lease with Shukaku in 2007, allowing it to develop Boeung Kak and the surrounding area. A year later, the company started pumping sand into the lake - and the long-time residents' struggle began in earnest.
Now the lake is little more than a puddle - and tourist traffic has slowed to a trickle, depriving business-owners of income.
Residents look out at Boeung Kak lake Developers plan to construct residential and commercial buildings on the lake
Along with the other families on the east of Boeung Kak, Heng Mom says she has a legal right to be there. Many of them have called the lakeside home for decades - and under Cambodia's land law, that should entitle them to full ownership of their properties.
The World Bank funded a land-titling project which was supposed to make the Boeung Kak residents' status official, along with hundreds of thousands of other Cambodians. But it moved at a snail's pace, before it was finally cancelled by the government two years ago.
Without land titles, the lakesiders were in a vulnerable position. Thousands of them left as their homes flooded, and the leafy vegetables they used to harvest for sale from the lake disappeared along with the water.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14488100
"We never used to have flooding before the company came."
"The company" is Shukaku, an entity which does not have a listing in the local Yellow Pages, but is otherwise very well-connected. It is owned by a senator from the governing Cambodian People's Party. His wife runs Pheapimex, which controls vast areas of land through government-granted concessions.
The authorities signed a 99-year lease with Shukaku in 2007, allowing it to develop Boeung Kak and the surrounding area. A year later, the company started pumping sand into the lake - and the long-time residents' struggle began in earnest.
Now the lake is little more than a puddle - and tourist traffic has slowed to a trickle, depriving business-owners of income.
Residents look out at Boeung Kak lake Developers plan to construct residential and commercial buildings on the lake
Along with the other families on the east of Boeung Kak, Heng Mom says she has a legal right to be there. Many of them have called the lakeside home for decades - and under Cambodia's land law, that should entitle them to full ownership of their properties.
The World Bank funded a land-titling project which was supposed to make the Boeung Kak residents' status official, along with hundreds of thousands of other Cambodians. But it moved at a snail's pace, before it was finally cancelled by the government two years ago.
Without land titles, the lakesiders were in a vulnerable position. Thousands of them left as their homes flooded, and the leafy vegetables they used to harvest for sale from the lake disappeared along with the water.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14488100
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- groups:
- Earth Care, Water Is Life, Co-Evolution, Environmental Law
